Quote:As the so-called fiscal cliff negotiations drag on in Washington with the media covering Repubican House Speaker John Boehner’s latest temper tantrums, a bipartisan coalition of former government officials with deep ties to the defense industry and Wall Street are ratcheting up the pressure to cut retirement programs while sparing military contractors.

“Fix the Debt – a corporate-backed lobbying group advocating debt reduction with a $60 million budget – has failed to embrace defense spending cuts as a viable deficit reduction option, despite the fact that defense spending makes up over half of discretionary spending,” begins a new report by the Public Accountablity Initiative, a non-profit watchdog group, which focuses on the financial interests of who is behind cutting retirement security programs and other needed safety nets.

“The group’s 'core principles' focus on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reforms and 'pro-growth' tax reform, and fail to even mention defense spending,” PAI’s report continues. “Fix the Debt’s eagerness to point the finger at social safety net spending while virtually ignoring defense spending makes more sense in light of its corporate backing. A review of the group’s corporate ties shows that many Fix the Debt leaders have lucrative connections to companies with billions of dollars in defense contracts.”

It’s often said that Washington insiders love ideas more than people—which is why some ideological obsessions, such as dismantling social safety nets, take precedence over more everyday concerns on Americans’ minds, such as jobs. But lurking below the superficial pronouncements in Washington’s policy wars there's often a profit-making agenda—and that is the case in the fiscal cliff crisis and negotiations, PAI reports, as it follows the money.

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The US spends more on "defense" than the next 10 countries combined. Justice would be for schools and social programs to have all of the money they need and for the Pentagon to hold a bake sale to buy tanks.